clean up the dead you leave behind
by BerryliciousCheerio
Summary: Lay waste to your future. All you know is her. / (or: lydia would burn the world for allison)


**did someone ask for angsty allydia resurrection/reincarnation au? no? too fucking bad bc i wrote it**

**tbh i just really loved the concept of lydia doing some unspeakable things to bring allison back, of them both thinking the other is too good for them, and of a reincarnation/soulmate sort of situation, ja feel? **

**its six thirty in the morning here while i edit**

**i have not slept**

**quoted: oppenheimer and by extension the _Bhagavad-Gita_; andrea gibson's poem _I Sing My Body Electric; Especially When The Power Is Out_**

**disclaimed**

* * *

**...**

* * *

You mourn. You all mourn—

some more than others.

But you, you think, shaking in your bathtub, mourn the most.

**...**

You will never, ever speak of it. Of her. Of the things you felt—

_feel_, because when it comes to Allison Argent there is no past tense. There is here, now. You love her. You loved her, and you lost her, and you love her still, and you will bite your tongue until it fucking falls out, because you were not allowed to love her. You cannot love her. You should not love her. But you do.

You have. You will. You do.

**...**

It is the first night.

You've yet to change your clothes, and Scott still has her blood on his hands, his shirt. Melissa comes, tries to coax him to change, but he flinches away from her and you understand, you do. There is so little of her left, you have to cling to all that you can.

After the refusal, Scott's mother leaves you to it, in the basement, to your mourning. Stiles huddles in the corner—

his entire body shakes and you think that he may collapse, but you may as well. You cannot think about the others. You can't. All you can think is _Allison_, the way you feel as if someone has ripped you in half, the way you felt the sword as if it were you—

it should have been you. All you can think is that it should have been you.

It wasn't her fight, but it is her blood that spilled, that stained your palms.

**...**

(allison argent was human, but she was, without a doubt, the most heroic among you. you were her friend—

you will flinch at the word some days, embrace it others—

and that was reason enough for her to make every one of your fights her own, always)

**...**

There are nights when you cannot breathe. When missing her threatens to overwhelm you, drag you under, drown you.

Your mother keeps telling you to talk to somebody, and she still thinks that Allison just _died_, just left the world in some freak accident, and you can't find the words to explain _no, Mom, she died for me_. She tells you to talk, but you can't find the words to encompass the love that you felt—

that you feel for her, to hold all the emotion and pain and _everything_, because there are no words big enough, lovely enough—

there will never be words that are right. Allison was flesh and blood, scarlet nails and silver—

you'd kissed her once, when you both were a little bit drunk, and words can never explain how you felt that night. She was warm and alive, tasted of death and wolfsbane, and you thought that she was the holiest thing you had ever touched.

**...**

They burned Rome.

Salted the earth, so that nothing could ever grow there again, and Allison was your final battle, your holy war—Rome found its place in the chambers of your heart and the salt _stings_ in the soil of your body, the ruins.

Let there be ruins.

**...**

There is a part of you that is angry—

there are so many parts of you that are angry. You push them down, bury them so deep that it will take centuries to rediscover these, the bitter, angry bits of yourself that seethe, that rage against the cards that the world has dealt you.

You string yourself together, sew yourself up in the predawn light because Allison is _gone_, and you need to drag yourself forward, because that is what people do.

**...**

(stiles finds you, one night, when the bags beneath his eyes threaten to swallow him whole. he looks at your laptop's open screen, the papers in your shaking hands, the blood on your knuckles and—

_resurrection, _he intones, _can kill you_.

you decide not to tell him that you've already died)

**...**

(you have died in every century—

burned and drowned and stabbed, shot and hung and crashed. her death always holds more pain)

**...**

You do not move. You—stasis—you find yourself at her grave every night, find dirt on your palm but her grave untouched, so you prepare.

Mortgage your wrists to soothsayers, offer your blood, teeth, tears to the stars in a bargain for her, for Allison, for everything she was and is and could have been. Mountain ash burns your flesh as you pack it into cuts on your palms, and Deaton watches you silently, judging, from the corner of the room. You'd trusted no one else to remain a bystander, and he is impartial, passive. Medical knowledge enough to sustain you.

The arrowhead cuts into your skin when you hold it between your palms, and you think that this is your beginning.

**...**

(_I said_ _to the sun_

"_Tell me about the big bang"_

_The sun said_

"_It hurts to become"_

allison is your big bang, your catalyst—your genesis.

but you ache.

god, do you ache.)

**...**

Her grave remains unmoved. She does not rise, and you do not begin. The voices sing louder, call you traitor, call you failure—

your kind is harbinger, augury of death. You are not meant to return, to breathe life into corpses, because all you can do is _take take take_. The world is a barren, cold place, and you will become. You will become. You will _become_.

Lydia Martin, frost in her hair, will become.

Deaton leaves you, shrieking into the cold, calling forth the powers of hell, heaven, the purgatory between them. You scream until you are raw, until copper fills your mouth, because what good are you now? What good are you to the pack, your pack—

you have no claws. No teeth, no howl. Electricity does not sing through your veins.

_Traitor, traitor. Failure._

Lay waste to your future. All you know is her.

**...**

(you knew her as alekto in ancient greece. unceasing. you risked exile, death to touch her, feel her skin on yours, before sappho, before you had a name for what you felt—feel—will feel.

she cut her breast off with a silver knife and fled her family for the wild—

amazon, _antianeirai_, left you behind. when they came for your home, she'd kissed you while it burned. _free, _she had mouthed against your neck. _we're free_. you knew then that you could never be—

you had known her when the first empire fell and you will know her again.

when they bring you her body, arrows protruding from her chest—

all that skin you'd run your fingers over not hours before, bloodied and broken—

you are not sure if it has been months or years or centuries, but you are not shocked)

**...**

Mexico burns you. The cities are too alive, the desert too dead—

the dirt sings to you, louder and louder still, and it drowns out all the rest. Death touched you in the Calaveras home, but you did not fear—

there had been no singing chorus until you were in the desert. There is unease in your bones, slicking your airways as you near the church—La Iglesia. When the Jeep comes to a shuddering halt—not that you expected anything less—

your heart stutters.

Malia tells you that there are _things_ in the darkness, and you almost laugh.

**...**

Araya Calaveras asked after _La Loba_, the she-wolf, and you had been ignorant—

are ignorant still. Myths did not scare you, but oh, you think they should have. You are the stuff of legends, the stuff of nightmares—

harbinger of death, you wash bloodstained clothes the night before, you run the messages of the devil to the living. Bring them news of death, stain their floors with blood; you do not breathe. You are ghost, are keener—

sing the _caoineadh _at the funeral, the grave, because all you can have are the _bodies_, the corpses.

You are devil, destroyer. _I am become death_.

You think you should have been born nuclear.

**...**

(you knew her—

knew, know, will know. time is circular and you will always know allison—

alekto, alexandra, alice, all the others—

you will always know her. you will always lose her. you will always be robbed, bereft.

there is nothing else)

**...**

Kate is not a surprise. You tasted her poison for miles, smelled the heavy scent of death, of rotting flesh before the wolves did. She does not fight—

berserkers, bones chattering, circle and attack, and you feel it building, the scream, the shriek, the _caoineadh_ and you wish you would die. God, let it be you this time.

**...**

It is not you.

**...**

It is something better.

**...**

Your beginning is drenched in blood, teeth stained red.

But you ache.

God, do you ache.

**...**

(aching is all you know)

**...**

Kate grins at you when Scott asks for Derek. At you, her teeth feline and dangerous and taunting, and your stomach bottoms out. You've been wearing Allison's arrowhead on a chain for weeks and it sings to you now, burning against your breast and you think—

you hope. You want.

"Little Lydia," she whistles. And she knows. You know that she knows. "I never liked puppy eyes, anyway."

And that is when you begin.

**...**

Allison is baptized in blood, dripping rubies to the desert floor, and it comes back to you, all of it—Greece, Rome, Jericho, Chicago—all the times you had known her and loved her and lost her.

You had known pieces, remembered the pain of Allison, the touch in all your other lives, but it settles on you completely, the weight of it, and you think that this is why. You have shattered the cycle, done what you couldn't in the past, what you will never achieve again.

She stands before you, painted red and proud and _alive_, and the voices cease.

**...**

She sees you, and you have only ever seen her.

"Lydia," she breathes, and you have always had the same name, so familiar on her lips. The ache is there, intense, and there is no denying it now—the pack has to know, from the way you stare at each other across a desert.

"Even trade," Kate promises smugly. "In fact, I think your banshee would probably agree with me when I say the trade is in your favor."

And you cannot argue, because what good is a brooding werewolf when _Allison_ is here, flesh and so much blood, real and in front of you, looking at you like you hung the moon? Derek can burn, for all you care.

You would burn the world—have burned the world—will burn the world for her. Only for her.

**...**

You return to Beacon Hills with a fifteen year old Derek, Kate's corpse, and Allison, breathing beside you, and you'd made Kira ride with Scott, made Malia take the passenger seat beside Stiles, and you stutter out a breath when Allison takes your hand so casually, skin warm and real and _here_.

Your blood sings, tied to her, always her, and this ache is good, is hard and near, bright and shining and holy—

she is holy, marble and gold, and you tremble when she reaches for you.

**...**

(you left alice in chicago—

loved her fiercely, but she was more and you were less, and you did not want to be the reason for her end. it was 1971, and you crept from your shared bed and into the night, shoes in your hand.

she did not come for you, and you tried not to miss her.

you died alone, on a country road in a flipped car in '73. it was nothing less than you deserved)

**...**

Her father collapses when you bring her home. He does not ask for an explanation, and you do not provide him one, and Allison grabs for your hand when you turn to leave them. _Stay_, she mouths, eyes wide and pleading, and you don't think that you could ever leave her, not now, not again, not with grief still so fresh in your veins.

You stay.

Chris does not know it all, but he eyes the scars on your hands, your wrists, the bags under your eyes, and pulls you aside when Allison is in the shower. His hands are heavy on your shoulders, and there is too much emotion in his eyes for you to handle, his expression too earnest, to raw—

you flinch when he starts to speak.

He stops. Starts over. "It did a number on you, yeah?"

You shake your head, trembling again, because it is a lie. You have not slept in weeks—

haunted by the past and the could have beens, the should have beens, everything you were supposed to have when the world began, when the pieces of you and the pieces of her came into existence, intertwined.

Hands shaking, you have faced another future without her, and—

Allison returns, then, clean of blood, and her smile is bright, clean.

More than you deserve.

**...**

She has to leave. Dead for months—

three months, six days, to be exact (you do not have a running tally in your head)—

an obituary was published. Stories decided upon. A funeral. People cried. People mourned. People forgot.

But a dead girl cannot walk into Beacon Hills High and expect the world to go on as normal. You can't really breathe when you think about her leaving again, think that maybe if you don't see her, she's not real. Object impermanence at its finest.

But you have lived without. Gone decades with her in the ground, and you have narrowly avoided it this time, no intentions of going back. But it has only been a few weeks since her return, and she's been relegated to her home, going crazy—

you've tried to help; brought over magazines and coffee and take out, spent long nights catching her up on reality television and not resting, watching over her as she thrashes in her sleep.

Sometimes you catch her clutching her belly, as if expecting the knife to still be there.

You help her pack for France.

**...**

(stiles had warned you of the side effects of resurrection—

like he knew anything of the affairs of the dead.

you had scoffed, ignored him as you bled over allison's grave, bringing her back, but righting the wrongs left you with an exhaustion you will never conquer. you yawn so wide, swallow the world whole—

bags so dark, so heavy under your eyes. you wake screaming, blood in your mouth, hands clawed, curled into the bedsheets, heart pounding so hard you wish it would burst. but allison reaches for you, eyes wide in the dim light of her bedroom—

her hands are cool against your feverish skin, and she looks at you so gently, so tenderly, lips pursed—

you will never tell her all the things you did, all the things you would have done, but the way she holds you feels something like absolution)

**...**

You think that she remembers, bits and pieces, of all the lives you've led before—

all the times you didn't succeed, didn't bring her back. You're studying, quietly, books spread out on her bed while she's looking up French high schools that accept midyear transfers, and you look up and find her staring at you, brow furrowed. You flush under her scrutiny, bite out something that sounds like English—

maybe it's Latin (you could not care less, really), but her eyes stay on you, wide with wonder. Allison worries her bottom lip, catching it between her teeth; when she cocks her head to the side to study you, you worry.

Wonder what secret she's discovered, what riddle she's solved—

what will send her away from you. Finally—

"I really love you, you know?"

And there is nothing you can say in response—no witty remark to counter it.

Her voice is sincere, eyes earnest, and you _ache_.

...

Your story is this—

girl loves girl, girl loses girl.

You are monster. You are death. You take and you take, and you do not deserve Allison Argent's love, her sincerity; you are not deserving of how gently she takes your hands when you appear on her doorstep, two am, cold, shaking still.

You have lost her in every century, had weeks and had decades, and none were ever enough. Reject the corpses—

choose flesh and blood, working lungs and a racing pulse. Allison is good, holy—

generous and caring, brave and better than you, but you are selfish and you will take and take and take if it means that she will always look at you the way she does now, the way she has, the way that she will.

**...**

(you burned in salem.

called witch, called sinner—

allison was taken by the pox and you knew how to bring her back, consequences be damned.

they had found you at the river, her corpse beside you, your fingertips ragged and bloody from digging, prying open the coffin. your wrists were open, your palms scored—

the townspeople watched in horror as you dripped your blood over the body—

her body.

they did not move until you began the incantation. the flames were hot, unbearable—

better than living without her)

**...**

She has a scar, you know—

you walk in on her changing one day, knocking and entering without waiting for a response. Her back is to you for a moment, the exit wound wide and unrelenting, reaching for a shirt, and when she turns you saw it in its full glory—

angry, puckered skin, red and screaming for attention.

You have not defined what you are, have not talked about the way she kissed you that first night, whispering, "Is this okay?" hand on your elbow, your cheek, bathed in the weak light from the bathroom. There is no term that you can describe her with, to encapsulate whatever it was you were doing, holding hands when it's dark—

there is no word, and you do not think you should be seeing her this way.

It was different before—

before you'd realized what it was you felt for her, before she'd died, before she came back with _I love you_'s stuck between her teeth, waiting for you. Now—

now you gasp out something like an apology and close the door hastily. You thank whatever power it is that kept Chris away from the apartment today. He has been kind and understanding—

letting you share her room even after he caught you kissing one day, but you think that he will find his limits if he finds you with his half naked daughter.

You wait ten minutes, then knock. Allison's voice is weak through the door. "Come in," she says, and you do, stepping in hesitantly and closing the door behind you. Her eyes are down—

she will not look at you.

"Ally—," you start, the nickname rolling off your tongue easily as you step towards her, reaching out. Allison shies away and—

she thinks you horrified—disgusted.

How do you say that the scar is nothing ugly? It is raw and real, a reminder of how she came back, how she survived. A memento. Something to remember you by—

all the _you_'s that came before, all the _you_'s that will come after.

You start again. Take her wrist gently and bring her towards you, slowly, let her have all the time she needs if she wants to leave. "Baby," you murmur, and the pet name is automatic—

you can't help it, really.

Allison clasps her hands behind your neck and lets you trail a hand under the hem of her shirt, to the flat plane of her stomach.

The scar is smooth, and you swear you can feel her heartbeat in it.

**...**

(let your hands be repentant. let them heal)

**...**

You accompany the Argents to the airport. It's all you can do. Chris drives there, lets you sit in the back with Allison, fingers interlocked. She looks excited, alive. Her eyes are dark and dancing, and you think that this will be good—

for her, for you. For the fragile little thing you built with shaking hands and shuddering breaths. You tell yourself this, time and time again.

There will be no ruins this time. There will be no salt, no holy war—the wars are over, and you have survived, intact. She is holy and you are whole—

let there be peace. No ruins. No burning stake, no crashed car. An open future ahead of you.

You do not cry when she kisses you goodbye.

**...**

(jericho fell and you were slaughtered in your bed. you watched her bleed out next to you. they called you immoral, broken—

condemned by their god.

they cut you to pieces, but you kept your eyes on her corpse)

**...**

You visit in the spring with French universities bookmarked on your laptop. Allison is alive—

electric.

She meets you at De Gaulle with flowers, which is hilarious because you have chocolates for her. An older couple coos when you embrace, and, tired as you are, you flash them a smile in response.

She keeps your hand in hers the entire journey to her apartment, talking in rapid Franglais, and you're so glad that you learned French because it is so beautiful coming out of her mouth.

You kiss her suddenly, on the platform of the station. Your bags sit to the side of you, dropped by distracted hands, and you hope that no one will take anything because, while Allison is infinitely more important than _things_, the handbag is Prada and probably too expensive for the state your credit is in.

Her tongue slips into your mouth and they—who are they?—can have the damn bag, for all you care.

**...**

The future is bright. You grow old with Allison—

return to Beacon Hills after university, after comprehensive redaction of the town's memory of her; the new belief is that she left for her senior year and university in France, to learn more about her family.

Your pack welcomes you with open arms, and Scott goes with you to the cemetery, to sand her name off the headstone. One day it'll return, next to yours. But not now.

The home you buy together is warm and comforting—the children you raise there loving and generous, like their mother. You watch with delight as you and Allison go gray, gain wrinkles and aches and pains that come with age. This is the first of your lives that you've reached forty, fifty.

Beyond.

Together.

**...**

(you knew her as alexandra in rome, and it was the closest you'd come to a happy ending. you both died young, together.

this is better)

**...**

Your story is this—

girl loves girl; girl fixes a flaw in the universe to be able to love girl, forever.

When you die in this century, it is final, divine.

The keening woman at peace.

Your ghosts rest easy.

**...**

(let your hands be repentant.

let them heal

let there be ruins)

**...**

* * *

_**fin**_


End file.
